I was born and raised in Goa. My photographic interests lie in landscapes, people, portraiture, culture, architecture and photojournalism. Geographical areas of focus are Goa, Iceland, and the Death Valley region of California.

I have photographed extensively in my homeland Goa, recording its land, culture and people, elements that express its sui generis ethos. I have documented the destruction of Goa's environment and its slide into the ugliness and urban chaos that characterize today's India.

Over the past several years, I have traveled all over Iceland, to many of its remote areas, in an ongoing in-depth exploration.

Legends of Silicon Valley: Narinder Singh Kapany

June 20, 2012

A pioneer in Fibre Optics.

In the early 1950s, a young Indian from Punjab, Narinder Singh Kapany, then a graduate student in the Physics Department at Imperial College in London, developed a bundle of fibres suitable for low-loss optical transmission. This key advance lead to a flowering of an entire new field of technology known as “fibre optics,” a term first coined by Kapany himself.

Dr. Kapany later moved to Silicon Valley in California where he turned into a productive entrepreneur and served on the faculty at the area’s universities. In 2009, Charles Kao shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in optical fibres. The Swedish Academy acknowledged Dr. Kapany’s contribution but sadly did not include him in the list of awardees. See this for more on that.

Now 85 years old, Narinder Singh Kapany is active at the Sikh Foundation in Palo Alto.

Coincidentally, when the dentist was using a diode laser connected with a single, insanely thin fibre optic strand on my gum the other day, I found myself wondering what genius came up with this technology!